July 26, 2012. Posted by Becca Pulliam.

Saturday, July 28, we will be at Caramoor, the outdoor performing arts center near Katonah, New York, for the 19th Annual Caramoor Jazz Festival. Yes!! Please come by and say HELLO.

Beginning at 3 o'clock with The Cookers, we're laying down tracks for a Labor Day special and future JazzSets .

Trumpeters David Weiss and Eddie Henderson and saxists Craig Handy and Billy Harper play that beautiful four-horn harmony of The Cookers, “a supergroup,” just home from a tour of the Northwest. They open the day.

The line-up features two winning voices – Gretchen Parlato (above), this year’s Jazz Journalists Association Female Singer of the Year, and Dee Dee Bridgewater, who received the award in 2011. Both Dee Dee and Gretchen spent July touring Europe, so stepping onto the Venetian Theater stage should ease the transition home for each.

Photo: Mark Higashino

And not one but two NEA Jazz Masters are on the program. Kenny Barron plays solo piano , and drummer Roy Haynes leads his Fountain of Youth Band. Barron will probably wing it. As he told George Kanzler in this month’s New York City Jazz Record, "I rarely do set lists. It works out better for me. Every time I try and do one I’m always sorry I did it. . . . I like to read the audience, see who’s out there" and choose accordingly. "That’s not pandering, it’s just realizing who you’re playing for."

Pianist to pianist, in a recent interview with Ethan Iverson of The Bad Plus, Fred Hersch said, "Kenny Barron is like a combination of Tommy Flanagan and McCoy Tyner." Can't do better than that!

And Roy Haynes is likely to get up and dance. We’ll make that a radio highlight. JazzSet’s Grammy Award winning Technical Director Duke Markos is recording and mixing in Surround Sound. We thank the Caramoor Jazz Festival for supporting WBGO and JazzSet programming from Caramoor.

From the back of the audience toward the stage ihe Venetian Theater at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts .. Photo: Gabe Palacio